BBC Proms [2013]

The Proms explores the emotive and richly varied world of gospel music, with leading vocal ensembles and community choirs combining to create a thrilling massed wall of sound. Favourites such as 'Swing Low, Sweet Chariot' and 'O Happy Day' are heard alongside popular hymns, calypso choruses, spirituals, and new songs inspired by funk and rock.

Presented by Clemency Burton-Hill

Pastor David Daniel (host)

Muyiwa & Riversongz

London Adventist Chorale

Ken Burton (conductor)

London Community Gospel Choir

Rebecca Thomas (conductor)

People's Christian Fellowship Choir

Ruth Waldron (conductor)

First broadcast in July 2013.

From the Royal Albert Hall in London, Pastor David Daniel hosts a gospel Prom.

Another chance to hear broadcasts of selected concerts from the 2013 BBC Proms season

Following the success of his Beethoven symphony cycle last year, Daniel Barenboim launches his Proms Ring cycle, the first ever performance of Wagner's four Ring cycle operas in a single Proms Festival.

Recorded at the Royal Albert Hall, London

Presented by Tom Service

Wagner: Das Rheingold (concert performance, sung in German)

Wotan ..... Iain Paterson (bass-baritone)

Loge ..... Stephan Rügamer (tenor)

Donner ..... Jan Buchwald (bass-baritone)

Froh ..... Marius Vlad (tenor)

Fricka ..... Ekaterina Gubanova (mezzo-soprano)

Freia ..... Anna Samuil (soprano)

Erda ..... Anna Larsson (contralto)

Alberich ..... Johannes Martin Kr䀀nzle (baritone)

Mime ..... Peter Bronder (tenor)

Fasolt ..... Stephen Milling (bass)

Fafner ..... Eric Halfvarson (bass)

Woglinde ..... Aga Mikolaj (soprano)

Wellgunde ..... Maria Gortsevskaya (mezzo-soprano)

Flosshilde ..... Anna Lapkovskaja (mezzo-soprano)

Staatskapelle Berlin

Daniel Barenboim (conductor)

The first opera in Wagner's Ring cycle, Das Rheingold, introduces us to mythical stories of sword-wielding heroes, castles, magic potions and scheming dwarves, and the central corrupting influence of the all-powerful ring, guarded by the cruel water-sprites, otherwise known as the Rhinemaidens. A lecherous Nibelung dwarf called Alberich seizes the gold and heads to Nibelheim where he builds an empire based on fear and slave labour. We also meet Wotan the chief god in his castle Valhalla, and who when he hears of the all-powerful ring, decides he wants it for himself. Das Rheingold is performed by Staatskapelle Berlin and a stellar cast from both Barenboim's Berlin and Milan ring cycles. This is the first ever performance of Wagner's four Ring cycle operas in a single Proms Festival.

Daniel Barenboim conducts the Staatskapelle Berlin in Wagner's Das Rheingold.

Another chance to hear broadcasts of selected concerts from the 2013 BBC Proms season

Staatskapelle Berlin and Daniel Barenboim at the 2013 BBC Proms with the third part of Wagner's Ring cycle, Siegfried

Recorded at the Royal Albert Hall, London

Presented by Tom Service

Wagner: Siegfried (concert performance; sung in German)

Siegfried ..... Lance Ryan (tenor)

Brünnhilde ..... Nina Stemme (soprano)

Wanderer ..... Terje Stensvold (bass-baritone)

Mime ..... Peter Bronder (tenor)

Alberich ..... Johannes Martin Kr䀀nzle (baritone)

Fafner ..... Eric Halfvarson (bass)

Woodbird ..... Rinnat Moriah (soprano)

Erda ..... Anna Larsson (contralto)

Daniel Barenboim (conductor)

Daniel Barenboim's Ring with the Staatskapelle Berlin - the first ever complete cycle at the BBC Proms - continues with the razored strings and yelping brass of a violent storm, the cloudburst of incestuous love, a bitter marital dispute and the first appearance of Wotan's rebel daughter, Brunnhilde, sung by a leading exponent of the role, Nina Stemme. The cunning dwarf, Mime, tries to manipulate Siegfried into stealing the magic ring from the dragon, Fafner, with the sword Nothung. But his plans go awry when Siegfried takes the ring for himself...

Daniel Barenboim conducts the Staatskapelle Berlin in Wagner's Siegfried.

Another chance to hear broadcasts of selected concerts from the 2013 BBC Proms season

Staatskapelle Berlin and Daniel Barenboim at the BBC Proms in the final opera of Wagner's epic Ring Cycle: G怀tterd䀀mmerung - The Twilight of the Gods.

Recorded at the Royal Albert Hall, London

Presented by Tom Service

Wagner: G怀tterd䀀mmerung (concert performance, sung in German)

Brünnhilde .... Nina Stemme (soprano)

Siegfried .... Andreas Schager (tenor)

Hagen .... Mikhail Petrenko (bass)

Gunther .... Gerd Grochowski (bass-baritone)

Gutrune / Third Norn .... Anna Samuil (soprano)

Alberich .... Johannes Martin Kr䀀nzle (bass-baritone)

Waltraute / Second Norn .... Waltraud Meier (mezzo-soprano)

First Norn .... Margarita Nekrasova (contralto)

Woglinde .... Aga Mikolaj (soprano)

Wellgunde .... Maria Gortsevskaya (soprano)

Flosshilde .... Anna Lapkovskaja (mezzo-soprano)

Royal Opera Chorus

Daniel Barenboim (conductor)

Tom Service presents the final leg of Daniel Barenboim's Ring Cycle with the Staatskapelle Berlin - the first ever complete cycle at the BBC Proms. And it's not a happy ending: G怀tterd䀀mmerung - The Twilight of the Gods - is the darkest of the four operas. The ecstatic love of Siegfried and Brünnhilde, celebrated at the end of the previous opera, is under threat from the plotting of the cunning Hagen. As the son of Alberich who created the all-powerful golden Ring, Hagen's single purpose is to regain the Ring at all costs. Soon Siegfried's fate is sealed: can Brünnhilde save the world?

The Staatskapelle Berlin under Daniel Barenboim performs Wagner's Gotterdammerung.

Another chance to hear broadcasts of selected concerts from the 2013 BBC Proms season

Presented by Louise Fryer at the Royal Albert Hall, London

Who needs instruments when you have seven voices and seven bodies? Building on the heritage of gospel with a style described as 'vocal play', the group performs its own material alongside arrangements of classics including George Harrison's 'While My Guitar Gently Weeps' and Phil Collins's 'In the Air Tonight' which incorporate a range of sounds from scratching and drums to brass and electric guitar all produced with just the human voice.

A Prom featuring a cappella vocal group Naturally 7.

Another chance to hear broadcasts of selected concerts from the 2013 BBC Proms season

Recorded at the Royal Albert Hall, London.

Presented by Martin Handley.

Vivaldi: The Four Seasons

Following his two Proms appearances in 2008 and his more recent one in 2011 to play solo Bach, Nigel Kennedy returned this year with Vivaldi's Four Seasons - with the Palestine Strings from the Edward Said National Conservatory of Music as well as members of his own Orchestra of Life. Revisiting a work he recorded to great acclaim nearly 25 years ago, Kennedy brings fresh insights to these visionary concertos, including the addition of his own improvised links between them.

Nigel Kennedy, Palestine Strings, Orchestra of Life in Vivaldi's The Four Seasons.

Another chance to hear broadcasts of selected concerts from the 2013 BBC Proms season

Presented by Catherine Bott

JS Bach: Easter Oratorio

JS Bach: Ascension Oratorio

Hannah Morrison (soprano)

Meg Bragle (alto)

Nicholas Mulroy (tenor)

Peter Harvey (bass)

Sir John Eliot Gardiner (conductor)

Sir John Eliot Gardiner's acclaimed Bach team - most famous for their year-long 'Bach Pilgrimage' in 2000, performing every one of Bach's cantatas - reassembled at the Royal Albert Hall during the 2013 BBC Proms for another Bach feast. On the bill are two complementary oratorios, telling the story of two crucial events in the life of Christ: the Resurrection on Easter Day, and his Ascension into Heaven.-.

Monteverdi Choir, English Baroque Soloists and John Eliot Gardiner in two Bach oratorios.

Another chance to hear broadcasts of selected concerts from the 2013 BBC Proms season

Urban Classics from the Royal Albert Hall, London

Presented by Andrew McGregor

Part 1

Mosolov: The Iron Foundry

Maverick Sabre Arr. Ben Cottrell: These Days

Laura Mvula Arr. Tom Richards: Sing to the Moon

Jacob Banks Arr. Ben Cottrell : Rainy Day

Fazer Arr. Jules Buckley: Fireflies

Lady Leshurr Arr. Jason Yarde: Blazin

Wretch 32 Arr. Tom Trapp: Blackout

Laura Mvula Arr. Jules Buckley: Father Father

Part 2

Henze: The Bassarids: Dance of the Maenads

Lady Leshurr: Solo

Maverick Sabre Arr. Tom Trapp: I Need

Fazer Arr. Ben Cottrell : Movie

Fazer & Young Artists: Chapters

Jacob Banks Arr. Jules Buckley: Worthy

Wretch 32 & Jacob Banks Arr. Jason Yarde: I'm Doing Ok

Laura Mvula Arr. Jules Buckley: That's Alright

Maverick Sabre Arr. Jules Buckley: Let Me Go

Wretch 32 Arr. Jason Yarde: Traktor

Labrinth Feat. Lady Leshurr Arr. Ben Cottrell: Let the Dogs Run Wild

Jules Buckley: Finale

Fazer (singer)

Laura Mvula (singer)

Maverick Sabre (singer)

Lady Leshurr (singer)

Wretch 32 (singer)

Jacob Banks (singer)

Jules Buckley (conductor)

First broadcast in August 2013.

Prom featuring the BBC Symphony Orchestra and performers from the UK's urban music scene.

Another chance to hear broadcasts of selected concerts from the 2013 BBC Proms season

From the Royal Albert Hall, London

Presented by Tom Service and Steve Lamacq

Laura Marling (singer)

Cerys Matthews (singer)

Anna St退phany (mezzo-soprano)

Andrew Gourlay (conductor)

They may come from different ends of the radio dial but, for one night only, BBC Radio 6 Music's Steve Lamacq and Radio 3's Tom Service combined their passions for music to produce the first ever collaboration between these two diverse and distinctive radio stations. As well as featuring double Mercury Prize-nominated Laura Marling, 6 Music's own Cerys Matthews and original punk rock purveyors The Stranglers, the line-up includes the London Sinfonietta, playing works by Varese, Berio, John Adams and Anna Meredith.

First broadcast in August 2013.

A Prom featuring Laura Marling, Cerys Matthews, the Stranglers and the London Sinfonietta.

Another chance to hear broadcasts of selected concerts from the 2013 BBC Proms season

Recorded at the Royal Albert Hall, London during the 2013 BBC Proms

Presented by Catherine Bott

Taverner: Kyrie 'Leroy

Taverner: Missa Gloria tibi Trinitas - Gloria

Gesualdo: Ave, dulcissima Maria

Taverner: Missa Gloria tibi Trinitas - Credo

Gesualdo: Ave, regina caelorum

Taverner: Missa Gloria tibi Trinitas - Sanctus

Gesualdo: Maria, mater gratiae

Taverner: Missa Gloria tibi Trinitas - Agnus dei

Peter Phillips (conductor)

The Tallis Scholars are the choral group who, arguably, have done more than any other in this country to bring the sacred Renaissance masterpieces of the Golden Age back to life. In their 40th anniversary season they performed music by a composer who himself had an anniversary - Carlo Gesualdo, who died 400 years ago, in September 1613. This 16th-century Neapolitan prince, notoriously, murdered his wife and her lover when he caught them in flagrante, and then - the story goes - spent the rest of his life in seclusion, atoning for this act of violence by composing a stream of sacred works whose highly-charged emotional expression shed a light on his own tortured state of mind. Alongside this intense, mannered music, a gloriously radiant setting of the mass by the English Tudor composer John Taverner - founding choirmaster of what is now Christ Church, Oxford, before falling from grace in the wake of his master, Cardinal Wolsey.

First broadcast in August 2013.

The Tallis Scholars and Peter Phillips with sacred choral music by Gesualdo and Taverner.

Another chance to hear broadcasts of selected concerts from the 2013 BBC Proms season

Presented by Christopher Cook

Richard Hills (organ).

From the Royal Albert Hall, London, Richard Hills in the annual organ Prom.

Another chance to hear broadcasts of selected concerts from the 2013 BBC Proms season

Recorded at the Royal Albert Hall, London

Presented by Suzy Klein

Newman: Street Scene

Kaper: Confetti

Raksin: Laura - New Suite

Herrmann: Psycho Suite

Herrmann: Salammbo Aria (Citizen Kane)

Korngold: Robin Hood - Suite

Moross: The Big Country

Part 2

Steiner: Casablanca - Suite

Various: Main Title - Song Medley

Waxman: A Place in the Sun

R　zsa: Ben-Hur - Suite

Venera Gimadieva (soprano)

Matthew Ford (vocalist)

Jane Monheit (vocalist)

John Wilson (conductor)

John Wilson and his orchestra return to the Proms in a celebration of the Hollywood film scores that Wilson describes as 'literally unsung' and a medley of theme songs (featuring distinguished vocalists) from otherwise non-musical movies.

Connecticut-born child prodigy Alfred Newman's 'Street Scene', from How to Marry a Millionaire, contrasts with the music of Jewish 退migr退s Erich Korngold, Max Steiner and Franz Waxman, with suites from Korngold's swashbuckling score for Robin Hood, Steiner's nostalgic music for Casablanca and Waxman's brooding score for A Place in the Sun - all of them Academy Award-winners - making for a red-carpet event at the Royal Albert Hall.

The John Wilson Orchestra in a Prom celebrating Hollywood film scores.

Another chance to hear broadcasts of selected concerts from the 2013 BBC Proms season

Presented by Petroc Trelawny at the Royal Albert Hall, London

Part 1

Alwyn: The True Glory - March

Walton: Suite - Battle of Britain

Richard Rodney Bennett: Lady Caroline Lamb - Elegy

Lucas: Ice Cold in Alex - March

Addinsell: Warsaw Concerto (from 'Dangerous Moonlight')

Strauss: Also sprach Zarathustra - opening

Ligeti: Atmosph耀res (excerpt)

Johann Strauss II: By the Beautiful Blue Danube - waltz (excerpt)

M. Giacchino: Suite from Star Trek: Into Darkness UK premiere

David Arnold: Independence Day - closing title

Jerry Goldsmith: Alien - closing title

John Williams: Star Wars Suite

Valentina Lisitsa (piano)

Lawrence Power (viola)

BBC Concert Orchestra

Keith Lockhart (conductor)

First broadcast in August 2013.

The BBC SO performs music from British war films and others with a space connection.

Another chance to hear broadcasts of selected concerts from the 2013 BBC Proms season

Presented by Andrew McGregor

Tchaikovsky: Symphony No 1 in G minor, 'Winter Daydreams

Szymanowski: Violin Concerto No1

Rachmaninov: Symphonic Dances

Baiba Skride (violin)

Vasily Petrenko (conductor)

Proms debut violinist Baiba Skride joins the Oslo Philharmonic and its new Chief Conductor, Vasily Petrenko, to continue the 2013 Proms focus on Polish music in their performance of Szymanowski's Violin Concerto No 1, an opulent nocturnal fantasy from a composer enchanted by the soundworlds of North Africa and the southern Mediterranean, and inspired by the 'amorous conflagration' of Tadeusz Micinski's poem 'May Night'.

Tchaikovsky's youthful Symphony No 1, 'Winter Daydreams', and Rachmaninov's nostalgic final work, the Symphonic Dances of 1940, frame the concerto in a programme rich with dreams.

First broadcast in September 2013.

Prom featuring the Oslo Philharmonic in Tchaikovsky, Szymanowski and Rachmaninov.

Another chance to hear broadcasts of selected concerts from the 2013 BBC Proms season

From the 2013 BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall, London

Presented by Andrew McGregor

Beethoven: Piano Concerto No 2 in B flat major

Bruckner: Symphony No 4 in E flat major, 'Romantic

Christian Ihle Hadland (piano)

Vasily Petrenko (conductor)

In their second Proms appearance last summer Vasily Petrenko and the Oslo Philharmonic explored the Romantic landscape and Schubertian echoes of Bruckner's Fourth Symphony. Repeatedly revised by the composer during his lifetime, the symphony opens with a radiant sunrise.

Before that, Christian Ihle Hadland joined Petrenko and the orchestra for Beethoven's Second Piano Concerto, built on the Mozartian model but already pointing to the bold gestures of the composer's maturity.

First broadcast in September 2013.

A Prom with Vasily Petrenko conducting the Oslo Philharmonic in Beethoven and Bruckner.

Another chance to hear broadcasts of selected concerts from the 2013 BBC Proms season

Presented by Suzy Klein

Recorded at the Royal Albert Hall, London

G　recki: Symphony No 3, 'Symphony of Sorrowful Songs

Vaughan Williams (orch. Anthony Payne): Four Last Songs (BBC commission: world premiere)

Tchaikovsky: Symphony No 6 in B minor, 'Path退tique

Ruby Hughes (soprano)

Jennifer Johnston (mezzo)

Osmo V䀀nsk䀀 (conductor)

Osmo V䀀nsk䀀 conducts the BBC Symphony Orchestra in a programme which concluded the season's focus on Polish music and premiering Anthony Payne's orchestration of Vaughan Williams's Four Last Songs. BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artists Ruby Hughes and Jennifer Johnston are the soloists, Hughes singing the three Polish texts of Henryk G　recki's 'Symphony of Sorrowful Songs', Johnston singing Procris, Menelaus, Tired, and Hands, Eyes and Heart in the Vaughan Williams. Tchaikovsky's 'Path退tique' was the penultimate instalment of the summer's cycle of his symphonies.

The BBC Symphony Orchestra under Osmo Vanska in Gorecki, Vaughan Williams and Tchaikovsky.

Another chance to hear broadcasts of selected concerts from the 2013 BBC Proms season

Recorded at the Royal Albert Hall, London during the 2013 BBC Proms

Presented by Penny Gore

Verdi: La forza del destino - Overture

Verdi: Attila - 'O dolore! ed io vivea

Verdi: I vespri siciliani - '

Published posthumously, the symphonically conceived Grand Duo dates from the summer of 1824 when the composer was engaged as music master to Marie and Caroline Esterhazy on the family's Slovakian estate.

Schubert: Piano Sonata in C major, D812 'Grand Duo

Imogen Cooper (piano)

Paul Lewis (piano)

Part of a BBC Proms concert at the Royal Albert Hall in London, first broadcast in September 2013.

Imogen Cooper and Paul Lewis perform Schubert's Piano Sonata in C, D812 (Grand Duo).

Another chance to hear broadcasts of selected concerts from the 2013 BBC Proms season

Recorded at the Royal Albert Hall, London

Presented by Donald Macleod

J. S. Bach arr. Guilmant: Cantata 'Wir danken dir, Gott, wir danken dir', BWV 29 - Sinfonia

J. S. Bach: Chorale Prelude 'Allein Gott in der H怀h' sie Ehr', BWV 662

J. S. Bach: Chorale Prelude 'Komm, Gott Sch怀pfer, heiliger Geist', BWV 667

J. S. Bach: Chorale Prelude 'Vor deinem Thron tret' ich hiermit', BWV 668

J. S. Bach: Prelude and Fugue in A minor, BWV 543

Bruckner: Symphony No. 8 in C minor (1890 version, ed. Nowak)

Klaus Sonnleitner (organ)

Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra

Lorin Maazel (conductor)

Lorin Maazel directs Bruckner's mighty Symphony No 8, a work composed as a conscious tribute to the three great Austro-German masters whose legacy Bruckner most admired: Beethoven, Schubert and Wagner.

Before it, music for organ by J S Bach - a reminder both that Bruckner was himself an accomplished organist, and also that he himself gave six recitals on the Albert Hall organ in 1871. Tonight's soloist - the distinguished performer Klaus Sonnleitner - is present-day organist at St Florian's Abbey, Linz, where Bruckner himself was organist almost 160 years ago.

First broadcast in September 2013.

Prom featuring the Vienna Philharmonic under Lorin Maazel in Bruckner and Bach.

Another chance to hear broadcasts of selected concerts from the 2013 BBC Proms season

The 2013 Last Night began with a celebratory new work by Anna Clyne and includes a rare performance of Britten's 1967 overture for chorus and orchestra, The Building of The House, a touch of Broadway magic and the sound of a glass ceiling being broken as Marin Alsop took charge of her first Last Night. Nigel Kennedy and Joyce DiDonato are the star soloists in a programme that picks up sea-faring themes from Bantock and George Lloyd and includes a transatlantic flavour.

Presented by Sean Rafferty and Suzy Klein

Anna Clyne: Masquerade (BBC commission: world premiere)

Wagner: The Mastersingers of Nuremberg - overture

Bernstein: Chichester Psalms

Vaughan Williams: The Lark Ascending

Britten: The Building of the House

Bernstein: Candide - 'Make Our Garden Grow

Massenet: Ch退rubin - 'Je suis gris! je suis ivre!

Handel: Xerxes - 'Frondi tenere e belle ... Ombra mai fù

Rossini: La donna del lago - 'Tanti affetti in tal momento!

Part 2

Bernstein: Candide - overture

Verdi: Nabucco - 'Va, pensiero' (Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves)

Arlen: Over the Rainbow

Monti: Csကrdကs

Trad. arr. Chris Hazell: Londonderry Air (Danny Boy)

Rodgers: Carousel - 'You'll never walk alone

Bantock: The Sea Reivers

Lloyd: HMS Trinidad March

Arne: Rule, Britannia!

Elgar: Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1 in D major ('Land of Hope and Glory')

Parry orch. Elgar: Jerusalem

Britten: National Anthem

Joyce DiDonato (mezzo-soprano)

Nigel Kennedy (violin)

BBC Symphony Chorus

Marin Alsop (conductor)

First broadcast in September 2013.

The Last Night of the Proms from 2013, with the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Marin Alsop.

Another chance to hear broadcasts of selected concerts from the 2013 BBC Proms season

Presented by Andrew McGregor

John White: Chord-Breaking Machine

Gerald Barry: No other people. (UK premiere)

Frederic Rzewski: Piano Concerto (BBC commission: world premiere)

Feldman: Coptic Light

Frederic Rzewski (piano)

BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra

Ilan Volkov (conductor)

Ilan Volkov brings his spirit of adventure to this late night Prom, featuring music as beautiful as it is ground breaking.

The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra performs music by a quartet of visionary and idiosyncratic composers, including two premieres. John White's Chord-breaking Machine could be seen as belonging to a tradition of experimental English minimalists, deconstructing musical material into its constituent parts and reforming as repetitive machine structures; Irish maverick Gerald Barry's No Other People, tonight receiving its first UK performance, also draws on repetition and seemingly simple musical figures, but here to create strongly contrasting canvases of bold, wild and stark music.

Frederic Rzewski's BBC Radio 3-commissioned Piano Concerto, tonally kaleidoscopic and stylistically far reaching, receives its world premiere, with the composer as soloist. And the concert concludes with Morton Feldman's late masterpiece, Coptic Light, a meditation for orchestra: a beatific and spiritual end to this late-night Prom.

BBC SSO under Ilan Volkov in music by John White, Gerald Barry, Rzewski and Feldman.

Another chance to hear broadcasts of selected concerts from the 2013 BBC Proms season

Staatskapelle Berlin and Daniel Barenboim with the second part of Wagner's Ring cycle, Die Walküre

Recorded at the Royal Albert Hall, London

Presented by Tom Service

Wagner: Die Walküre (concert performance, sung in German)

Wotan ..... Bryn Terfel (bass-baritone)

Fricka ..... Ekaterina Gubanova (mezzo-soprano)

Siegmund ..... Simon O'Neill (tenor)

Sieglinde ..... Anja Kampe (soprano)

Hunding ..... Eric Halfvarson (bass)

Brünnhilde ..... Nina Stemme (soprano)

Gerhilde ..... Sonja Mühleck (soprano)

Ortlinde ..... Carola H怀hn (soprano)

Waltraute ..... Ivonne Fuchs (mezzo-soprano)

Schwertleite ..... Anak Morel (contralto)

Helmwige ..... Susan Foster (soprano)

Siegrune ..... Leann Sandel-Pantaleo (mezzo-soprano)

Grimgerde ..... Anna Lapkovskaja (mezzo-soprano)

Rossweisse ..... Simone Schr怀der (mezzo-soprano)

Daniel Barenboim (conductor)

Daniel Barenboim's Ring cycle with the Staatskapelle Berlin continues with part two, Die Walküre, and more mythical and psychological forces at large. The opera opens with a turbulent prologue depicting the terrible storm and devastating events including incest and adultery that are about to shake the characters. Siegmund has been asked by Wotan to help him acquire the ring, but blots his copybook by falling for his long-lost twin sister Sieglinde. This angers Fricka, Wotan's consort, so much that she demands Siegmund's death. Brünnhilde, Wotan's rebel daughter who we meet for the first time, tries to defend him, but in punishment she is put to sleep on a rock surrounded by fire. Die Walküre is considered perhaps the most accessible of the Ring cycle operas, and ends with the powerful Magic Fire Music.

A performance given at the Royal Albert Hall of Wagner's Die Walkure.

Another chance to hear broadcasts of selected concerts from the 2013 BBC Proms season